Bilski Watch - Good Bad and Ugly edition

Okay (AmEx), Bad (eBay) and VERY UGLY (JP Morgan) today:

 

OKAY (can’t quite give it a GOOD)

U.S. Patent No. 7,480,633 “Real-time brokerage account application system and method”

Assignee: American Express

1. A computer-implemented brokerage account application method comprising the steps of:

receiving, at a host server, a request to establish a brokerage account including data related to an applicant;

forwarding, by said host server, said data to a credit bureau system for credit decisioning;

obtaining, in a real-time environment, a credit decision relating to said applicant from said credit bureau system at said host server;

in response to a favorable credit decision and said request, establishing a brokerage account with a line of credit for said applicant, wherein said brokerage account is established in real-time via said host server and through a solely automated process;

based upon said establishing said brokerage account, granting, through a solely automated process, real-time access to at least one of: buy, sell, and trade within said brokerage account prior to receiving payment from said applicant for an investment; and,

facilitating, through said solely automated process, said at least one of buy, sell, and trade within said brokerage account using said line of credit and prior to receiving said payment from said applicant for said investment.

 

Commentary: While most of the steps could be performed manually, it appears that the buzzwords of “server”, “real-time” and “solely automated” carried some weight with the examiner.  Then again, the examiner never raised 101 in any of the EIGHT office actions (including 3 Finals) in the seven years this was pending…  Notice of Allowance was pre-Bilski.

 

 

BAD

U.S. Patent No. 7,480,638 “Method and system automatically to remind parties to a network-based transaction to comply with obligations established under a transaction agreement”

Assignee: eBay

 

1. A method to facilitate a network-based commerce transaction, the method including:

recording establishment of a commerce transaction agreement between the first and second parties for purchase of an offering, wherein the commerce transaction agreement is established utilizing a network-based transaction system and wherein the commerce transaction agreement imposes first and second obligations on the first and second parties, respectively; and

automatically presenting a reminder option to the first party that is exercisable by the first party to remind the second party to comply with the obligations of the second party imposed under the commerce transaction agreement.

 

Commentary:  Wow.  The only “particular machine” here is the “network-based transaction system”, which is buried in a wherein clause.  Clearly not a “meaningful limit”.  The kicker is that this claim was affirmed by the BPAI.  Yep.   The examiner rejected for 103, and the Board reversed in May 2008 – post-Comiskey. (there was a dissent, but nothing about 101).  The examiner rubber stamped in September 2008.  Today’s BPAI would almost certainly kill this claim sua sponte.

 

 

VERY UGLY

U.S. Patent No. 7,480,631 “System and method for detecting and processing fraud and credit abuse”

Assignee: JP Morgan Chase

1. A method for detecting and processing fraud and credit abuse, the method comprising:

receiving a telephone call from a caller concerning a credit account;

identifying one or more potential fraud-related problems by searching the credit account data for conditions that match one or more predetermined qualifiers and quantifiers;

presenting the caller with a series of questions and soliciting, from the caller, responses to the series of questions, wherein each question in the series is generated based on the one or more potential fraud-related problems and further based on the caller's responses to earlier questions in the series; and

determining a fraud status associated with the credit account based on a computerized analysis of the solicited responses.

 

Commentary:   Are you kidding me?  “Based on a computerized analysis”??  And of course, it’s a first action allowance.  My initial guess was that this was a newbie examiner, but not so: this guy has been an examiner since at least 1997, with nearly 1,000 issuances under his belt.  But he’s in TC 2600 (communications), not 3600, which is the only somewhat plausible explanation for how this flew by.  NOA came two weeks before Bilski.  Some folks seem to get all the luck…